Tibor Nicholas Elek FISCHER

Tibor Nicholas Elek FISCHER (born in Stockport, 1959) has been described by England's Daily Telegraph as "one of the most brilliant novelists of his generation." His parents, both professional basketball players, emigrated from Hungary to England in 1956; Tibor Fischer grew up in Bromley, South London, and studied Latin and French at Cambridge. He subsequently worked for television companies and newspapers in England, and in Budapest from 1988 to 1990. His first novel, Under the Frog, was rejected by 50 British and 12 American publishers before it came out in 1992; it won the Betty Trask Award the same year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993. Granta magazine listed him as one of the twenty best young British novelists of 1993; his second novel, The Thought Gang, published to wide acclaim in 1994, is being made into a movie. His work moves rapidly to ever expanding recognition: his most recent novel, The Collector Collector, is a "literary lions" selection in the July 1997 Book-of-the-Month Club listings. This novel narrated by a 6000-year-old self-proclaimed "bowl with soul" is enjoying wide distribution in this country through Henry Holt. The US Information Agency is providing Mr. Fischer's support at the IWP.